4 ms·

It is necessary and good. We are re-implementing complex "excel apps" into web applications. Amount of money I have seen lost because people were using differe

by ozim 5y ago

It is necessary and good. We are re-implementing complex "excel apps" into web applications. Amount of money I have seen lost because people were using different versions of excel sheets that were not up to date is staggering. Users expect full interactivity and instant calculations as they change values (just like in excel), doing it with "posting forms to back-end and recalculating" will not sell at all because it will be worse UX than excel. Having complex calculations over multiple fields require use of framework because making it with vanilla js is just pain with no MVVM and observables and two way bindings. Then of course if you have web app you have one database all your employees are working on and all price items can be updated easily in some admin panel for every new customer.

sdoering 5y ago
> Amount of money I have seen lost because people were using different versions of excel sheets that were not up to date is staggering. Isn't that a processual problem? An organizational and structural problem? I have seen the same with Google Sheets as with Excel. I know Excel isn't liked in a lot of tech circles but I personally think MS came a long way with it. But yes - it can't solve organisational problems.
- ozim 5y ago
  Yes but as my experience shows process/structural problems are quite easily solved with software. Then if someone has problem with process you tell them "it is software that requires it" and they comply. Organizational problems are mostly problematic to translate to software and make projects die. Because if company is not organized, they won't have possibility to organize their requirements which will lead to problems.
  - couchand 5y ago
    > process/structural problems are quite easily solved with software. My experience has been the opposite: the software is easy, but only if you already know what it needs to do. So you have to actually solve the problem first. > Then if someone has problem with process you tell them "it is software that requires it" and they comply. How incredibly user-hostile. If they have a legitimate concern, don't leave it unaddressed. If there's something important about the process they're missing, it's a mistake to use the current state of the software as an excuse.
    - ozim 5y ago
      I wonder why people so often are picking least charitable interpretation and go with it. If I would write "I like fight sports" would you write "how incredibly hostile, don't punch people on the streets"?
      - couchand 5y ago
        Can you help me see the more charitable interpretation here? It sounded to me like the suggestion was to appeal to the supposed inflexibility of software whenever a question about process is raised. The software is entirely malleable. If the process can't change, explain why. But don't pretend that the software can't change.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I wonder how much money has been lost hiring software developers to implement something that Excel was handling fine. (snark snark, sorry, of course there are a lot of good reasons to move away from excel, but many projects fail or money might have been better spent elsewhere given how expensive it is to contract out for something new)
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    In my experience in being hired years ago for this kind of work, there is a significant cost to going “web app” but I’d also sell custom excel plugins. Usually these businesses were hitting the limits of excel’s capabilities when humans need to be involved (complex and hard to adjust formulas, copy/paste mistakes, etc). Most businesses don’t realize they can just have a custom excel plugin, and sometimes that is all they need. Sometimes a web app or custom software is the better solution.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      interesting... whats that look like? I know of VB script that can manipulate tables... does that let you do custom GUIs too? Any API where a webform could interact with excel? I might like to get into this field, solving business problems without building a whole app sounds great.
      - withinboredom 5y ago
        Just install the SDK when installing Visual Studio. I don’t see why you can’t have an embedded web view as long as you love Internet Explorer… it’s easier to just create a native UI though and call an API.
HNHatesUsers 5y ago
9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
> Amount of money I have seen lost because people were using different versions of excel sheets that were not up to date is staggering. Similar opportunity losses can be found through not keeping npm libraries up-to-date or through not doing full refactoring when there is a mainline change in a framework’s coding styles. .NET, React, and Angular all suffer from that problem, to this day, in regular enterprise, and I’m sure Java does too.
- chii 5y ago
  People on different excel versions causing business errors is going to have an order of magnitude higher problem than libraries not being up to date. At least an old version of react will still work - and if it had an error, that error was acceptable at the time of shipping. Plus the developer is in charge of updating libraries, presumably with some forethought. A user updating their excel at their whim is uncontrollable and irreversible.
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
    > People on different excel versions causing business errors is going to have an order of magnitude higher problem than libraries not being up to date. Do you have a link to software engineering research that would corroborate that opinion?
mattgreenrocks 5y ago
VB6 was better at this use case for 1/8 the resources, and had a much easier learning curve.

by ozim 5y ago

sdoering 5y ago

> Amount of money I have seen lost because people were using different versions of excel sheets that were not up to date is staggering. Isn't that a processual problem? An organizational and structural problem? I have seen the same with Google Sheets as with Excel. I know Excel isn't liked in a lot of tech circles but I personally think MS came a long way with it. But yes - it can't solve organisational problems.

ozim 5y ago
Yes but as my experience shows process/structural problems are quite easily solved with software. Then if someone has problem with process you tell them "it is software that requires it" and they comply. Organizational problems are mostly problematic to translate to software and make projects die. Because if company is not organized, they won't have possibility to organize their requirements which will lead to problems.
- couchand 5y ago
  > process/structural problems are quite easily solved with software. My experience has been the opposite: the software is easy, but only if you already know what it needs to do. So you have to actually solve the problem first. > Then if someone has problem with process you tell them "it is software that requires it" and they comply. How incredibly user-hostile. If they have a legitimate concern, don't leave it unaddressed. If there's something important about the process they're missing, it's a mistake to use the current state of the software as an excuse.
  - ozim 5y ago
    I wonder why people so often are picking least charitable interpretation and go with it. If I would write "I like fight sports" would you write "how incredibly hostile, don't punch people on the streets"?
    - couchand 5y ago
      Can you help me see the more charitable interpretation here? It sounded to me like the suggestion was to appeal to the supposed inflexibility of software whenever a question about process is raised. The software is entirely malleable. If the process can't change, explain why. But don't pretend that the software can't change.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I wonder how much money has been lost hiring software developers to implement something that Excel was handling fine. (snark snark, sorry, of course there are a lot of good reasons to move away from excel, but many projects fail or money might have been better spent elsewhere given how expensive it is to contract out for something new)
- withinboredom 5y ago
  In my experience in being hired years ago for this kind of work, there is a significant cost to going “web app” but I’d also sell custom excel plugins. Usually these businesses were hitting the limits of excel’s capabilities when humans need to be involved (complex and hard to adjust formulas, copy/paste mistakes, etc). Most businesses don’t realize they can just have a custom excel plugin, and sometimes that is all they need. Sometimes a web app or custom software is the better solution.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    interesting... whats that look like? I know of VB script that can manipulate tables... does that let you do custom GUIs too? Any API where a webform could interact with excel? I might like to get into this field, solving business problems without building a whole app sounds great.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      Just install the SDK when installing Visual Studio. I don’t see why you can’t have an embedded web view as long as you love Internet Explorer… it’s easier to just create a native UI though and call an API.

HNHatesUsers 5y ago

9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago

> Amount of money I have seen lost because people were using different versions of excel sheets that were not up to date is staggering. Similar opportunity losses can be found through not keeping npm libraries up-to-date or through not doing full refactoring when there is a mainline change in a framework’s coding styles. .NET, React, and Angular all suffer from that problem, to this day, in regular enterprise, and I’m sure Java does too.

chii 5y ago
People on different excel versions causing business errors is going to have an order of magnitude higher problem than libraries not being up to date. At least an old version of react will still work - and if it had an error, that error was acceptable at the time of shipping. Plus the developer is in charge of updating libraries, presumably with some forethought. A user updating their excel at their whim is uncontrollable and irreversible.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  > People on different excel versions causing business errors is going to have an order of magnitude higher problem than libraries not being up to date. Do you have a link to software engineering research that would corroborate that opinion?

mattgreenrocks 5y ago

VB6 was better at this use case for 1/8 the resources, and had a much easier learning curve.